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Hockey

Participation in Olympics looks bleak, but chance still remains for NHL in Korea

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman speaks at a news conference in Ottawa on March 17, 2017. On Tuesday, Bettman said "people should assume we are not going" to the Olympics next year in South Korea. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press)

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The window of hope regarding the participation of NHLers at the 2018 Winter Olympics has now closed a little more, due in part to the most gloom-and-doom statement to date delivered by commissioner Gary Bettman.

But is it officially shut? No, there still remains a crack of opportunity, even with the Commish painting such a bleak picture.

“As things stand now, people should assume we are not going,” Bettman told Reuters Tuesday, citing the fact that no negotiations are ongoing with the International Olympic Committee.

Bettman wasn’t just giving a reporter the business while he was delivering that pessimistic message at the Sport Business Summit in New York. The league has been clear that it wants to have a form of IOC Top Sponsor Status for handing over $3.5 billion in player contracts to participate, which would allow its platforms such as nhl.com and The NHL Network to have preferred priority when it comes to content from the Winter Games.

Because it is forced to shut down its operations for two weeks if its players take part, the NHL also makes it clear that it wants the IOC to cover all incremental costs such as travel and insurance, something the Olympic governing body says will no longer do after taking care of those expenses for NHLers in the past five Winter Games.

“From our standpoint, there may not be any next steps,” Bettman said.

Note the way Bettman words some of these phrases.

“As things stand now ...”

“... there may not be ...”

Indicators? Yes. Officially closing the books on the issue? Not yet.

“If a final decision had been made, I would expect the union would release an official statement,” an NHL player rep told Postmedia Tuesday night. “And we haven’t been told that yet. At least I haven’t.”

Keep this in mind, too: The NHL did not finalize its plans to send its players to the 2014 Olympics until July 2013. To that end, the league already has two schedules ready for the 2017-18 season: One that takes into account NHL Olympic participation, one that doesn’t.

Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of this standoff is the revelation that Japanese tire maker Bridgestone -- which doubles as a major NHL sponsor and IOC Top Sponsor -- is attempting to be a catalyst to bring the two sides together.

“Just know there’s a lot of people interested in the same thing and seeing if there is a way to make it work,” Phil Pacsi, Bridgestone’s vice president of sports marketing, told Reuters.

In the end, money talks, whether it be in CBA negotiations or Olympic haggles. Let’s see if there is enough of it to make Bettman change his tune which, “as things stand now,” to use the Commish’s own words, is quite ominous.